David Freyne’s third film begins where some love stories end: with the deaths of its protagonists. Larry and Joan, an elderly couple, bicker in traffic on the way to their grandchild’s gender- reveal party. “You love to complain”, Joan tells her husband, a crotchety octogenarian who would rather be going anywhere else. Larry soon gets his wish. After choking on a pretzel, he wakes up as his thirtysomething self (Miles Teller) on a train pulling into the “Junction”, a literalized purgatory between death and the afterlife.
From What Dreams May Come (1998) to The Good Place (2016), film and television have recently given concrete form to the afterlife, extending the emotional and philosophical stakes of “life” and love beyond death. Freyne’s purgatory is playful and imaginative. He has described the inspiration behind the Junction: “I got to fulfil my childhood ambition of building my own afterlife. It’s a far cry from the Catholic one of my youth, which … for me as a little gay boy was damnation”. Larry arrives at a 1960s train station-cum-hotel, with cream balconies overlooking a concourse of red seats beneath an enormous departure board and clock. Time is of the essence here – visitors have one week to decide where to spend eternity, with guidance from an Afterlife Coordinator (AC). The options are witty and plausibly attractive: Man Free World (at full capacity), Smokers World (where cancer won’t kill you), Studio 54 World (without the Aids crisis) and Weimar Germany world (with 100 per cent fewer Nazis). Pleasingly, bureaucracy thrives in the afterlife: the ACs work for a mysterious figure named Frank, who reports to the “Big Guy” – not a deity, simply the head of the administrative food chain. Capitalism persists too: the different “Worlds” are advertised like theme parks, and representatives from each eternity occupy stalls and hand out promotional pamphlets.
On arrival, Larry is disorientated and determined to find Joan. He is met by Anna, his AC, played with comedic flair by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who briskly explains the terms and conditions: once you choose your eternity, you can’t change your mind. The Junction presents a paradox that drives the narrative: it offers choice, but also the danger of choosing badly. One unfortunate visitor is chased through the concourse by guards, screaming: “I can’t look at another painting, it’s so boring. Museum World is the worst”.
This sets the scene for the film’s central conflict. After dying from cancer, Joan – acted with great charm by Elizabeth Olsen – arrives not long after Larry. To Joan’s surprise (and Larry’s horror), her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), has been awaiting her arrival since he died young in a war. Joan must now choose who to spend eternity with. Joan and Luke’s reunion is tender; Luke, suave and dashing, is full of romantic lines, and David Fleming’s score swells as they lock eyes. Larry is left looking like chopped liver.
As Larry and Luke compete for Joan, Freyne’s visual storytelling grows more inventive. Scene changes and the passing of days are marked by the unfurling of a canvas painted with the sky, another representation of the Junction’s artificially imposed timeline, which stands in contrast to the natural constraints of mortal time. Ruairí O’Brien’s cinematography evokes the style Wes Anderson has developed with his cinematographer, Robert Yeoman: symmetrical shots set Luke and Larry in visual opposition, and colour motifs mirror the characters. Joan trials eternity with Luke first. They spend time in her preferred World, a chilly paradise of snowy mountain ranges, blue lakes and evergreen forests, where they picnic, splash around in lakes and cosy up in a log cabin. Then as Larry and Joan begin their trial, visiting Beach World together, there is a visual and tonal shift. The busy, sun-soaked beach hums with reds and oranges. Yet mundanity intrudes even in paradise: the couple grumble about the crowds and the lack of an umbrella, and a sunbather’s hairy belly obscures their view.
In each world, the couple are offered an opportunity to visit the Archive Tunnels, an exhibit of their memories together that serves as an ingenious – and convenient – narrative device. Memories appear like staged plays with bare, sketched backdrops as the couple’s past selves act out key moments. They powerfully illustrate the ways in which feeling and relationships reify memory, even as the surrounding circumstances blur and fade. Pressing his claim to stay with Joan, Larry insists on the strength of his “narrative”. He and Joan have children together, and a shared history. As Anna tells him, everyone is just a “collection of memories”. While those Larry and Joan share are imperfect, the sequences in which we see Joan watching them back are some of the most affecting in the film.
The central trio handle shifts between comedy, tenderness and metaphysical absurdity with impressive ease. Turner lends to his role a touch of 1950s gallantry, even if, as the film progresses, the performance becomes flatter and his character seems reduced to little more than an archetype. Larry and Joan have the maturity and mannerisms of elderly people and the speech and physicality of thirtysomethings, which Olsen and Teller deliver with surprising naturalism.
Towards Eternity’s conclusion, the plot cycles through a series of familiar narrative twists and loses energy. There are genuinely funny moments, however, and Freyne balances these well with more sincere reflections. Early on, Larry notes that he has reached death without ever contemplating the meaning of life, an admission that captures something essential about the film. Eternity doesn’t offer any great eschatological resolutions, but it does articulate something about the distinction between a love that is idealized and suspended, and one of a sturdier kind, built over years of compromise.
Francesca Tiana is production editor at the TLS.
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